keywords: Cost Of Living

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said that 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' From the roots of ISIS to Russiagate to North Korea to border control in Australia, current trends both international and at home bear this out.

Apple has been in hot water for years about the ethics of the manufacture of their devices. Yet iPhone fans gleefully fork out more money every September when the next version is ceremoniously revealed. This circus has become so normalised, most of us hardly blink an eye. How many people ask themselves whether the upgrades in the technology are worth getting a new phone every year? More importantly, how many people question the real-world costs that their purchase entails?

From the perspective of Australian policy, both Hamid Kehazaei's death and the loss of the Red Cross contract to support asylum seekers give value for money. When we are dealing with people, however, values other than economic efficiency may come to mind.

He was a notorious transgressor on the football field, and the last years of his life were a sustained transgression. Terminal sickness has its own code. It is normally handled and propitiated by silence. Jim Stynes seemed to do it a different way.

From Ubirr, the wetlands, verdant and abundant with birdlife, stretch to the fringing escarpment. In a place so full of the beauties of nature, one feels keenly the absence of its traditional owners. For Australian and overseas visitors to experience this view, they lost their land.

Jesuit peace activist John Dear is continuing the tradition of civil disobedience pioneererd by the Berrigan brothers in the 1960s. A month in Australia has convinced him that we want to give up our freedoms in order to become part of the new American Empire.

But just as the frighteningly precarious nature of our lives has been thoroughly exposed, so too has the inequality of it all. Even in a pandemic, we aren't all suffering equally. Even in a pandemic, structures of privilege continue to operate.

She is sitting on the edge of a mountain in the Annapurna, her face, away from the camera, her gaze, focused on the Lamjung peak, experiencing a moment of peace like many before and many after. The seconds could be hours could be days, the weather could be challenging or kind, she could be alone or surrounded by trekkers. It has taken careful hoarding of time and money to be sitting there framed by sky and snow.

Most restaurants don’t grow all their own food. Of course, they can and may grow some produce, but their expertise is on the preparation, cooking and plating of the dish. They look to farmers to supply the raw ingredients. This is a pretty good analogy for the role of the national newswire, Australian Associated Press (AAP), which will be closing mid 2020.

His government continues to support, with massive subsidies, extractive and exploitative industries that undeniably warm the planet and threaten the natural environment. How can this be a legitimate perspective as a publicly-confessing Christian? Why would this shepherd not want to move all of us to safer ground?

At the next global financial crisis, when questions about what we want our monetary system to do for us become a matter of survival, why not devise a transactional system that is not just geared towards the consumption of goods and services, but involves monetary exchanges for social goods, such as sustainable production, or civic benefit?